JENNY LENS

Meet the Photographer

Jenny Lens was not just one of the few photographers chronicling the early punk scene in both North America and London, she was also one of the few women working in a very male-dominated field.

Her life is pretty fascinating and made up of the three acts usually associated with characters in movies and novels: 1) after being a much sought after photographer, Lens left the scene 2) she goes back to school, gets married and becomes a computer teacher for almost twenty years 3) after divorcing her husband, Lens returns to her love of photography and resumes that part of her career.

While some of her contemporaries on this list have had the opportunity to take some very candid shots of their subjects, Jenny Lens (formerly Jenny Stern), was just as “punk” and “rock n’ roll” as her own. She photographed the first published image of the Germs, was responsible for a notorious image revealing a particular body part of Debbie Harry (which got her banned from shooting Blondie ever again), and a nude shot of Captain Sensible was turned into a button thus becoming popular among the fans of his band the Damned. Lens was also a frequent contributor to the now legendary fanzine Slash. Unfortunately, Lens has only published one book of her work, 2008’s “Punk Pioneers: When Punk was Fun.”